Nashville's Taylor Swift is the top-selling digital singles artist in history, as certified by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Swift's "You Belong With Me" has now been legally downloaded (meaning consumers paid for the downloads) more than three million times, and Swift's career singles total is now at 22.5 million digital certifications.

Swift's albums are also doing just fine: All three of her Big Machine Records albums have sold more than three million copies, 2006's Fearless having sold more than six million.

A handful of artists started off 2011 with shiny new gold or platinum sales plaques, and Nashville connections figure prominently on the list.

Among the acts grabbing those sales certifications in early 2011, highlighted by the Recording Industry Association of America Friday: double-platinum sellers Carrie Underwood (for her Play On album) and Kings of Leon (Only By The Night); platinum sellers Jason Aldean (My Kinda Party) and Sugarland (The Incredible Machine); and Gold sellers Tim McGraw (Number One Hits) and Keith Urban (Get Closer). New Nashvillians and multiple Grammy nominees the Black Keys also earned a gold certification for their Brothers album.

Platinum plaques come for a million albums shipped, gold plaques for 500,000.

A cache of country artists also earned big digital single sales. Underwood, Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum and Miranda Lambert earned platinum digital certification for their tracks "Undo It," "Mine," "American Honey" and "The House That Built Me," respectively. Kenny Chesney and Aldean got gold for "Somewhere with You" and "My Kinda Party."

The artist who so far has the early-2011 digital crown -- pop voice Katy Perry, with certifications touting eight million plus in digital downloads -- also has Nashville career roots: She tried to launch a contemporary Christian music career in Music City early on.

"My dream already came true," Johnson said in a statement. "All I ever wanted was just to get to ride around and sing country music. It's cool when things like that happen along the way. Because those are the things I never thought I could achieve."

Johnson will tour in 2011 with Kid Rock on the "Born Free" tour, which opens Jan. 15 in Detroit. The tour comes to Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on Friday, Feb. 18, and tickets ($25, $39.50, $49.50 and $92.00) are on sale now via www.livenation.com, the Bridgestone Arena Box Office or charge by phone at 800–745-3000.

Still, Strait keeps racking up the accolades: The singer's broken a Billboard charts record by logging a Top 10 hit every year for 30 consecutive years, as his "I Gotta Get to You" shifts up to No. 9 on the music industry publication's Country Songs chart.

That run of Top 10 hits, Billboard says, is a first in chart history.

Strait's hit history traces back to 1981's "Unwound," and this latest Top 10 success brings Strait's cache up to 82 Top 10 Country Songs placements (he trails only Eddy Arnold, who has 92, there).